So, I despise the new automated response system because it takes away the human component. I understand that’s the ultimate goal. Can we somehow list hours in it? I try not to respond within the hour 24*7 due to that pesky sleep thing and I’m sure customers will be a bit confused by your automated response telling fibs. (Which they will attribute to the hub and not to you)
I too don’t totally agree with the whole automated response system, as I find it misleading that because some people may refuse to put a bot on their hub to rely their reply time may be longer. I’m not totally sure as to how it all works, but if having a bot respond initially does count as a response thus making your response time very minimal then I’m very against it. However it’s also possible that they’ve made it so that a bot response doesn’t count towards response time, I just don’t know as I haven’t looked into it. Either way I think pushing towards removing the human aspect of 3d hubs is a big mistake as in my own opinion it is one of 3d hubs’ strong points as those involved in it are often very passionate as well.
Hey Jonah,
The automated response does not get rid of the reponse time timer. It is just not displayed anymore. You still need to get back to the customer personally to stop the timer. I also don’t think that the human component is removed, because it is clearly visible, that the first hub “response” is automated.
However I do agree with your proposal of being able to list business hours. I’ve had a number of those 3am-orders come in. Obviously there is no humane way to respond to those in time.
It would also be handy to personalise the automated message.
Sincerely,
Jonas
Hey guys,
Thanks for the feedback. Just to clarify, we see the human aspect of the whole platform to be one of the most useful parts of the network and it is not our intention to change that at all.
On contrary, we want to emphasise that in every order you can and you should chat with the Hub, which is not always obvious to the customers. That’s why we will have that automated comment “which is marked as automated” by the Hub on all of the orders that encourages the customer to ask Hubs directly.
Indeed the next step is for us to take this smarter where you yourself can adjust what it says. Combined with business hours (which we’re already working on) it will allow you for even better optimisation!
We’ll release the updates mid this week and will make sure that all the Hubs are updated about that. Looking forward to hearing more feedback then.
I think this new feature has some good uses, especially if we have full control over it. Which would of course include the ability to turn it off completely if a hub so desired. I think it would be great particularly for those late night orders that come in outside of my posted business hours.
But it it still doesn’t seem to be addressing my pet peeve - starting the countdown clock if someone posts a latenight order! That always seemed to be very unfair to us hubs. A string of those could completely mess up our response rate! And in real life, if I called a business after hours and left a message, I wouldn’t hold it against them if the didn’t call me back until when they came in next day, would you?
Pepstick, The systemwide automated response system is not the same as hubs using a bot to respond. I can see how using a script or not may seem like cheating the response time system. I can also see how it would simply be a way to increase efficiency and customer service for larger hubs. I think the 3D hubs automated response system will level the playing field in some aspects and make automated response bots a little useless. You seem to take issue to hubs using scripted responses? Am I misreading your posts?
Well, we can write a quick greasemonkey script to respond to the automated response with business hours and other details. Unfortunately it will also automatically reset the timer making default response times a few seconds. Seems more efficient to realize that both individuals and businesses have hours of operation and allow that information to be passed to the customer.
That’s a good idea and a solution to my issue with the automated 3d hubs response. I think I’ll work on this today.
I don’t like the automated response… AT ALL.
First off the first time I saw it trigger it told the customer my response time was 7hrs. When at the time both my hub and my dashboard indicated less than 1 hour. Automated response since the first one now indicate 1 hour which I still don’t like because it depends the time of day.
I do like as others have pointed out the ability to set business hours. I have had countless orders come in like 2-4hrs after i went to bed (and I goto bed after 11pm usually.) I really dislike waking up in the morning and checking orders and the count down timer is mostly depleted because the order has been sitting all night with no response. If we were able to indicate business hours at least the people posting these orders wont be waiting around all night for a response they will never get. I actually had one customer get upset they stayed up super late for about 3hrs after they submitted the order expecting my posted 1hr response time.
I think 3DHubs needs to reevaluate this automated message concept @Filemon & @Arnoldas
It just needs a few tweaks. Like any other feature.
No I have an issue with automated responses that of which try to mask themselves as real responses in particular. If the automated responses through the website are clearly marked, which they are, then it makes it obvious to the customer that it is not an actual person responding. I think it could also be useful if bots had hours of operation, I e during the day the bot wouldn’t respond but at night when a hub manager isn’t available it would automatically start responding for him/her. Just a thought
Same for me. I am also have to work and my response times are different for every day. Especially at working days. Response can take more than 24 hours if I am really busy.
Hey All, just catching up on the discussion here. Thanks for sharing your feedback, super useful! As some of you have probably read on other threads this feature kind of slipped out a bit before planned, but since it was kind of seperate from the other order page improvements we’re building we figured we could keep it live. We fixed the hours vs minutes issue last saturday and have gone back and fixed all the messages that had the wrong response time on them.
It’s good to point out that the automated response will not be taken into account for your average response time, as that would make everyone’s response time a couple seconds :-). Secondly we’re thinking about providing Hubs the ability to customize this message to for instance include business hours or other useful information for customers.
Let me know if you have more feedback and what other ways you think we can make the conversation on the order page clearer to the customers while at the same time making it easier for Hubs to manage their orders.
Custom messages would be nice… but also… maybe the ability to set the message on a schedule as well. I for one would rather -NOT- have a message at all during my normal hours. Feels redundant because the first message to order requests is thanking them for the order and that I will get back to them shortly after reviewing their models…On the other hand if its after my normal hours the automated message would be VERY helpful.
Yeah I suggested the same thing as well earlier in the forum. Itd be nice to have scheduled hours that the response is automated for the times when I’m not available daily such as night when I’m sleeping. Itd be a nice addition to it all
Interesting I certainly agree on the out-of-office hours part, as this automatic message greatly improves the experience from customer side, especially if we add the business hours.
As for the automatic response within business hours (which might be customizable in the future) I would like to better understand what you see as the downside of informing the customer straight away and following up in the 1-2 hours after that? Our data shows that customers are often ‘shopping around’ and by responding straight away we think we can reduce that and have more customers stick to the first Hub they pick… let me know what I’m missing here
For a lot of us hubs, the response time during the day isn’t ‘a couple hours’ it’s much closer to 5-10 minutes. I personally would prefer the first thing a customer have interactions with be a real person than a bunch of code whenever possible. During the day all it becomes is the automated message sends then I almost instantly after would also be responding with a similar message, almost bombarding the customer. Whenever possible I’d like to keep all of the interactions between real people. Also I don’t see why shopping around for hubs is a bad thing, I mean of you go to buy a car you don’t buy the first one on the lot. Now this is much different than car buying, but regardless some customers will surely take their time on deciding to insure they’re getting the most competitive price while not giving up quality. It’s this ‘shopping around’ that drives all hubs to continue to grow and improve in quality, speeds, and reliability as without these essentials it would be excruciatingly hard to start a successful hub today.
Hi,
I just had some not so nice experience with these automated responses.
1/
first of all, for new customers, except for the first message, they don’t see the difference between the automated messages and my messages.
while working/updating an order, every change I made issued a notification, causing confusion and questions from the user.
So either allow us to decide (or review) every automated message, add the tag “automated message” there also, or give a specific textcolor to the automated part of the message.
example : I changed the color/material on an order by accident (the dialog was not clear) and changed it back, generating an automated message each time.
Maybe it would improve our experience a little bit if you also publish a list of all automated messages, e.g. in a separate tab in our hub, so we know when to expect what
2/
as already mentioned a few times, the initial message when the customer places and order state something like :
AUTOMATED MESSAGE
Thank you for your order at my Hub.
I will check the printability of your files as soon as possible, on average I get back to customers in 3 hours.
If you have any questions or special requirements, reply to me here and I’ll be in touch.
I cannot respond on average in 3 hours if most of my orders come in after 10pm or later
Even the fact that the message indicates “automated message” the customer expects me getting back to him within 3 hours after him placing the order, as that is what the message tells him. (I already got questions on that)
As requested below a few times, at minimum 3DHubs should allow us to specify our business hours, and include a reference to that in the automated messages.
OR
Allow us to template automated messages from hour own hub
I don’t mind automation, provided it does not hurt our business and reputation, and currently it does not always improve user, customer, owner experience, on the contrary, it causes some confusion and irritation.
Hi, is there any news about this?
Today I had again a similar issue : a customer was send an automated message that I normally would respond within 3 hours,
I got a mail and text message at the moment the customer made his request.
But I could not answer immediately, 4 hour later I got again a mail and text message that 4 hours have passed and I still didn’t respond.
This is really annoying for me and the customer (who thinks I’m going to respond in 3 hours)
Also, why does the message say I’ll respond within 3 hours, where my public hub profile indicates 12 hours, and at the backend I see the average median responsetime is 5h13m (see attachment)?
We where promised a solution, or to gain back some more control on our communication with the customer,
but after a few months passed, we still do not see a solution.
I would still prefer the option where I can specify my responsetime myself.
Anyone from 3DHubs, can you please give some feedback on the issue here?
Thanks
Olivier.
